Monday, April 23, 2007

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

Noam Chomsky is one of the most hated men among the neoconservative crowd. But before he became known as a media and political critic, he revolutionized the study of linguistics. His critique of B.F. Skinner also changed modern psychology for the better.

Avram Noam Chomsky, Ph.D (born December 7, 1928) is the Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is credited with the creation of the theory of generative grammar, considered to be one of the most significant contributions to the field of linguistics made in the 20th Century. He also helped spark the cognitive revolution in psychology through his review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior, in which he challenged the behaviorist approach to the study of mind and language dominant in the 1950s. His naturalistic approach to the study of language has also affected the philosophy of language and mind (see Harman, Fodor). He is also credited with the establishment of the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages in terms of their generative power. According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar during the 1980–1992 time period, and was the eighth most cited scholar in any time period.[1][2][3]

Beginning with his critique of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Chomsky has become more widely known — especially internationally — for his media criticism and politics than for his linguistic theories.[4][5] He is generally considered to be a key intellectual figure within the left wing of United States politics. Chomsky is widely known for his political activism, and for his criticism of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments. Chomsky describes himself as a libertarian socialist and a sympathizer of anarcho-syndicalism (he is a member of the IWW). He is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Department of Social Sciences.

This is a long film, but it's a very good one -- and very worth the nearly three hours of your time.


Via: VideoSift


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